25 years later, ’86 Astros still feel the loss

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Twenty-five years later, a quarter-century to the day removed from the mixture of euphoria and ultimately heartache that was Game 6 of the 1986 National League Championship Series, we are still awaiting discovery of the proper emotion.

As the team currently reels from its worst-ever season and the ownership limbo that further strangles the franchise, it would be a shame not to celebrate on behalf of the 1986 Astros. It was a team that improved by 13 wins, clinched the National League West via a Mike Scott no-hitter and finished its campaign in one of the greatest games ever played.

It also would be impossible not to lament how that game ended, 25 years ago today at the Astrodome, with the Mets celebrating a trip to the World Series after finally dispatching the Astros 7-6 in 16 innings.

“I think 1986 was probably the greatest group of Astros players ever assembled chemistry-wise,” Astros team historian Mike Acosta said. “They came back and won games that they really shouldn’t have won, so by the time they got to the postseason they were still in that mode.”

But of course there’s the other side to what now exists as the midpoint of the Astros’ up-and-down 50-year history.

“When I talk to them about that season, there’s certainly still a sense of emptiness more than anything else.”

Scott loomed

Fulfillment would have taken more than just a clean ninth after Bob Knepper took the Astros to the brink of a 3-0 victory over the 108-win Mets with eight scoreless innings. It would have taken more than just a baserunner on in front of the iconic game-tying home run from Billy Hatcher in the 14th inning. More than just one more miracle from Kevin Bass, who struck out to end the game after the Astros came most of the way back from a three-run deficit in the 16th with two more baserunners who would go stranded.

This was only Game 6.

Of course, the Astros had Scott going in Game 7. The same great righthander who not only tossed the no-hitter in the clincher but also had a Cy Young Award-winning season and threw complete games against the Mets in Games 1 and 4 – the first a five-hit shutout, the second a one-run, three-hit performance.

“Just about everybody on the team felt like if we won Game 6 we would have won Game 7,” recalls Jim Deshaies, then a starting pitcher who warmed up for what would have been his first relief appearance of the year in Game 6 but was never used.

Instead, it was the Mets who ended up on top with Jesse Orosco’s final strikeout. They were the ones who went on to a World Series just as memorable, defeating the Boston Red Sox in seven games and getting all the subsequent side-effects – the Seinfeld cameos and the tell-alls on their rampant cocaine use and bad-boy collective persona.

The rivalry between the teams, which were previously hardly rivals in anything but date of birth (1962) with their to-date lackluster histories, had been building since a mid-July 15-inning Astros win. The contentious contest featured Astros manager Hal Lanier’s first ejection and Knepper exclaiming afterward, “If we happen to play them in October, it’ll really be something.”

Sure enough it was something, with the teams splitting the first two at the Dome and splitting the next two at Shea Stadium with the Astros winning both Scott starts. And then it got really interesting as the Mets took a 12-inning affair in Queens with the aid of a controversial call from first base umpire Fred Brocklander, who later would be critiqued after his plate performance in Game 6.

Back at the Dome on a Wednesday afternoon-turned-evening-turned-night, the Mets got them once more in the fourth one-run game of the six, leaving the Astros clubhouse stunned. A feeling that lingers to this day.

“Your opponent, he’s thinking the same thing you’re thinking; ‘we’re headed for glory,’ ” said Game 6 starting third baseman Phil Garner this week. “And when you don’t get there, it’s a major letdown.”

More than just 1 game

But of course there’s the other side.

“Somebody had written a book about it being the greatest game ever played,” Garner said. “It might have been one of the greatest playoff games ever played until we played the one (with Chris Burke’s 18th inning home run) in ’05.”

And that’s the mixed legacy of Game 6 and of 1986 as a whole. The heartbreak combined with the great story of a middling third-place team that soared the next season.

“It’s more the broader story,” Deshaies said. “It’s a team that was not given much of a chance of winning and the way the city got behind the team.

“As a younger player, I don’t think it hit me like it hit the older players. Game 6 hurts more in hindsight.”

Maybe that one true emotion will never be found.

zachary.levine@chron.com

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NUMBERS GAME

A team’s win probability can be determined from any moment in a game using the actual events of baseball’s long history and how often the exact situations turned into runs. Here’s a look back at some of the key moments and turning points of Game 6 of the 1986 National League Championship Series with the win probabilities showing just how large the emotional swings were.